All the pleasance of her face
Telleth of an inward grace;
In her dark eyes I have seen
Sorrows of the Nazarene;
In the proud and perfect mould
Of her body I behold,
Rounded in a single view,
The good, the beautiful, the true;
And when her spirit goes up-winging
On sweet air of artless singing,
Surely the heavenly spheres rejoice
In union with a kindred voice.
_The Wings of Oppression_ strikes a high level of artistic expression
and makes a quite extraordinary appeal. It is intense poetry, lyrical
and meditative.
Here is that solid body of thought which, in addition to artistic
expression, is requisite to poetry that attains and holds a high place
of esteem. Great variety of form is also here; excellent blank verse
with a movement at once easy and restrained, an equable, strong flow,
bearing lofty meditations; sonnets after the manner of the masters;
octo-syllabics of sententious felicity; various apt lyrical stanzas.
Culture alone, of which there is abundant evidence, could not have
produced these poems. The poetic endowment, thoroughly disciplined,
was necessary. Mr. Leslie Pinckney Hill is a poet. His powers are
rich, varied, and developing. His second book will be better than this
excellent first.
But more than the merit that has been intimated there is in these
lyrics and measured musings a pathos, a restrained Laocoön cry, that
must be to thousands an arresting revelation of the unimagined
sufferings of the cultured colored people of our land. Mr. Hill's
_Wings of Oppression_ has a message in it for America.
ROBERT T. KERLIN
LEXINGTON, VA.